#chapter posting

What they found up there was a ship. Crashed and burning, with two creatures who are very similar to humans, and yet definitely, absolutely not human. 

In the year 2035, an alien ship crash landed on earth. Two subjects were recovered, both severely injured, one only barely clinging to life, and they were brought to the fabled Area 51 to recover, and to be observed.

What was left of the ship was brought to a bright, well seasoned mechanic named Brennan Saddler, an early grad at the top of his class, a well known name among those who need work done on vehicles of all genres. Brennan’s touched on all makes of cars, and planes, even handled a rocket ship or two, and when the remains of an alien vessel were discovered he was the first choice to bring in to try and piece it back together. 

Only issue with that plan is that, after three days of combing through the pieces, and placing them in their spots like a jigsaw puzzle, Brennan realized he had no idea what fueled the thing, or even what exactly it was made out of. Obviously alien, which was very cool, Brennan has quite a few sessions of just laughing as he marveled the pieces, however it meant that he wasn’t sure how to put it back together.

Welding didn’t seem to work, glue would fizz and burn off of the stuff, there were two pieces that, when pressed together, simply seemed to stick that way, but no other pieces did the same. 

After another few weeks, he put in a request with the man who would check on him every day to see, and maybe try and speak, to the aliens who landed with the ship, maybe they would be able to give him more insight.

He was told that they would see what they could do, and for a month he waited, toying with the pieces, eventually he even found a box among the wreckage that was actually fully intact. A box about the size of a shoebox, with a blank screen on the front, with alien characters carved into it. He figured it must be some sort of black box, and he puts it in his office.

A month after he asks to see the aliens, they come back to him, tell him that one of them has died from their injuries, but they did get him a chance to meet with the other.

They stress to him that they’re not sure how intelligent, exactly, the alien is, he doesn’t communicate in any significant way, that they’ve found, at least, and it lowers Brennan’s hopes of finding anything out, but he needs to try.

It’s another three weeks after he’s given the news he’ll be allowed to see the alien before they actually go to any significant efforts to schedule a day for it, working at the speed of government, his mother would say. Finally they settle on a date.

After another month where he will have to wait.

So Brennan tries to focus on the ship. He can’t find any sort of obvious power source, he can’t figure out how the pieces go back together- well, he knows how they go together, just doesn’t have any way of making it stay- and all he’s got is that silver box with the screen.

He drops it onto his desk, in the back corner of the workshop one day, and he looks it over, finger grazing along the… metal? For some sort of seam or seal where the thing opens, but it is, astonishingly, seamless. The screen is the only thing on there that signifies that the thing is anything more than a hunk of… well metal.

So he breaks out the tools. Hammer first, but no matter how hard he hits it it doesn’t leave a dent, not even on the screen. Next he goes at it with a drill and a sizeable bit, but it only scratches the surface, never penetrates, and Brennan throws the box at a wall. He’s hoping that maybe, hidden inside that shoe-box sized piece of shit, is the blueprints or something to the damn ship, or something he can work with. He even calls up his friend who works construction and puts it under a jackhammer, but it still doesn’t budge. 

He’s about to throw it at another wall when the office door opens, and a woman in a pressed pantsuit is staring at him with wide eyes. He lowers the box, dropping it back to the desk, “Can I help ya?” He asks, rubbing a thumb at one of the scuffs on the box, only for it to wipe right off. He rolls his eyes at it, and turns to the woman, who seems to have been waiting until she had his full attention. 

“Hi, Brennan, right? Brennan Saddler?”

“Yeah, Yeah, that’s me.” He nods, wiping his hands on his jeans and offering her one for a shake, “You are?”

She looks at his hand with a look he could only describe as wary, and then steels herself before grabbing his hand and shaking it, “Doctor Jenna White, I’ll be acting as your monitor while you’re meeting with AR2, tomorrow.”

Brennan stares at her for a moment, then turns to look at the swimsuit calendar that’s tacked to the wall, “Shit, that is tomorrow innit?” He mumbles and sighs, “Finally, feel like I’ve been sitting here with my thumbs up my ass for months.” Dr. White doesn’t seem all that impressed by his metaphor, and her face twists a little at the idea of it. 

“Well, it is, in fact, tomorrow. I’ll be there to keep an eye on you and ensure that no… Confidential information makes its way to the public.” Jenna watches him, one finely plucked eyebrow raised as if she’s expecting an answer. Brennan just stares back for a long moment, before he ‘oh’s in realization she’s expecting a response.

“Yeah, no, definitely, the whole alien thing ain’t public, and I will hundred percent respect that. I ain’t planning on telling everybody I meet about the alien thing.”

Jenna nods, “Good. Now, as for today, I am here to introduce myself, and lay out for you the ground rules for your visit with AR2-”

“Wait, real quick, what in god’s name does AR2 stand for?”

“Arctic recovery two,” she explains, crossing the room to sit in one of the chairs in front of Brennan’s desk, “As it was recovered in the arctic, and it was the second one we registered, it is AR2.” She nods, and she folds her hands on her lap, “Now, the rules?” She gestures to the chair across from her, and Brennan heaves a sigh. Getting told what to do in his own damn office. He still does it, though.

The rules that Dr. White lays out for him basically sum up to three basic concepts, don’t go into the chamber, if he somehow manages to get into the chamber, don’t fucking touch the alien, and if he somehow manages to get into the chamber, and touch the alien, he will very likely face some serious consequences. Dr. White stresses that part.

So Brennan’s only choice is to speak to the alien through a pane of glass, and his chances of being able to swing that are extremely slim. However, he’s not stupid, he has a plan. Sure, they might not speak the same language, but that’s what visual aids are for.

After Dr. White takes her leave, Brennan digs his phone out and wanders around the ship, taking picture after picture. He snaps pictures well into the night to make sure he has every angle he could possibly get to try and communicate with the alien.

He finds himself wondering what it looks like, after midnight, when the exhaustion is starting to seep in but he isn’t ready to stop taking pictures yet. He digs through the debris to find what he believes was the seat the aliens used, and it’s… Fairly normal looking, at least to him. It looks like a plain ass chair, like in a car. It’s almost disappointing when he looks it over, and mocks up how the belt system was set up, and he figures out that the aliens had to have been humanoid for the set up it has.

Not that there’s anything wrong with them being humanoid, but he had been lowkey hoping for something much more interesting.

That night when he sleeps he dreams of cooler aliens.

His meeting is set for early afternoon, but he’s got himself ready to go, with a plan on how to try and communicate with pictures, by around eleven, a few hours early. When Dr. White shows up she seems legitimately surprised by his eagerness, but Brennan points out that he is, in fact, meeting an alien for the first time ever, and she seems to relax after that. She leads him outside to a sleek black car with dark windows, and a driver who holds the back door open for both of them. Brennan gives the guy a nod, and he nods in return.

“You know where to take us, Anthony,” Dr. White says toward the front seat as the driver, Anthony apparently, gets in. She gets a grunt for an answer, but it seems to be enough for her as she settles into her seat, gathering a clipboard from the pocket on the back of the seat to examine the papers.

Brennan doesn’t really have anything to distract him aside from his phone, but he somehow feels that would be inappropriate right now, so he just settles on taking in his surroundings. The car is dark inside as well, in fact Brennan can barely see out the windows aside from the front and the driver’s windows.

He looks over Dr. White, as well as he can without being creepy. She’s wearing another suit, except this time it’s with a sharp pencil skirt, just as prim as she had looked yesterday, though today it’s with legs out, which Brennan can respect, especially since she has some killer legs from what he can see. Her black hair is pinned up in a flawless bun and he finds himself wondering how she manages that as he runs a hand through his own mess of shoulder length hair. Dr. White, even as she’s reading and rubbing absently at her chin, gives off a solid air of poise.

It makes Brennan feel like one hell of a slouch, in a grease-stained t-shirt and jeans that are equally, if not more, grease-stained. Honestly, he’s a mess, but he’s basically a mess twenty-four-seven.

He finally takes his eyes off of her, and looks to the driver, Anthony. The man’s pretty built, though his face doesn’t give it away. He’s got a scruffy red beard that hides what could be a sharp jaw, or a soft jaw, Brennan can’t tell from here. Anthony is a bit tall, the top of his head almost brushing the roof of the car, his hair is gelled down, otherwise Brennan is sure it would make up the difference. His face is partially obscured by dark shades, so Brennan can’t pin down an eye color on the guy, but the red hair, and the freckles that Brennan can see peeking out from the man’s collar leads him to assume green. Perhaps brown? Who knows.

Brennan doesn’t get too much longer to think on it, because Anthony catches him staring in the mirror, and clears his throat to get his attention. Brennan jerks a bit, and his eyes dart to the dark window. His eyebrows drop and he glares at his reflection for a moment before rolling his eyes and turning to Dr. White again. “How far is this place, anyways? I thought I was on site here?”

“You are. It’s a big campus, Mr. Saddler.” Dr. White replies without looking up from her papers, at least not at first. She finally looks up at him, “Area 51 spans over twenty-thousand acres of land, over thirty square miles. You can be on-site, and still be a five minute drive, Mr. Saddler.” She gets this smirk on her face that makes Brennan smirk in return, and she hugs the clipboard to her chest. “We’ll be there in just a few moments. In all reality, you could have walked here, but that wouldn’t be very hospitable of us, would it?” She smiles at him, and the car comes to a stop. She waits as Anthony gets out, comes around and opens her door for her.

She steps out, her kitten heels clicking on the pavement of the parking lot as she steps away from the car, and turns back to Brennan, waiting for him.

He takes a moment to swallow, and he finally follows her out of the car. Once she seems to be sure he’s following, she turns, and heads toward the building at the end of the lot. She scans a badge at the door and holds it open for him, she leads him to a desk where they both sign in, and she makes small talk with the woman behind it as Brennan scribbles down his information. He sets down the pen, smiles at the woman behind the desk, her nametag says Rebecca, and he turns to follow Dr. White.

Dr. White scans her badge at another set of doors, and Brennan follows her through the halls. It looks like a standard lab, full of beakers and test tubes with unrecognizable substances in them. She leads him down a hall, and then another, and then another and another until they finally reach an elevator. She scans her badge again, they step inside, and they go down. Down so far that Brennan starts to wonder if this isn’t all an elaborate ruse to throw him into a volcano or something because he’s asked for too much from them. 

The doors open, and there’s no volcano, however there is another hallway, which makes Brennan heave a sigh. Dr. White leads the way, and thankfully enough they go into the third door on the left, because Brennan was sure that if she had taken him down another hallway he may have actually screamed. 

Thankfully, they’ve reached their destination, and Dr. White explains to him that the only thing standing between him, and his attempt to get answers, is the door on the other side of the room.

He thanks her, and he starts to head for the door, but he pauses before he even lifts his hand to touch the handle, because he realizes, this is it. He’s about to see an alien.

On the other side of this door is a creature from a world that’s so far away Brennan can barely process it, and he’s about to walk in there, and try to use pictures on his phone to try and figure out how the thing’s ship works. He’s about to try to talk to an actual alien. 

He is so not prepared for this. Oh god what if he fucks it up? What if it doesn’t like him? What if it spits acid on him or something? Oh god, worse, what if it likes him, a lot, and busts through the glass just to plant it’s alien eggs in his stomach?

“Mr. Saddler?” Brennan flinches a bit, turning to look at Dr. White, eyebrows raised in question, “Are you alright? You seem nervous. You know you aren’t in there alone, right? I will be there, as well as the lead researcher, and you aren’t in any danger. It is perfectly safe.” She steps up to his side, and rests a hand on his shoulder, “Come on, you don’t wanna waste what might be your only opportunity to see a real life alien, right?” She winks at him, and she pats his arm, opening the door for him, and guiding him into the room where he finally sees it. He finally sees his first alien.

For Ezra’s 18th birthday, he treated himself to fresh pecan rolls and listened to a flute concert in the village square. For his 19th birthday he was exiled.

Likely nobody realized the significance of the day he was sentenced to gather as many of his belongings as could fit on his back, climb onto the back of a saddled roc and let the roc driver carry him away from the Cloud Island of Mielle. No one was that intentionally cruel. Even the judge seemed to sympathize even as she ignored his pleas and protests. The elderly lawyer arguing on his behalf had set a bony hand on his shoulder and sighed, shaking his wig-clad head. “It’s just how people are, Mr. Kettle. This sort of thing doesn’t happen here. People need someone to blame.” Ezra was prone to travel sickness and promised himself he would not mingle it with spite as the enormous, red-feathered bird sailed through the atmosphere. He would rise above this. It was nothing but a setback, one of many the brilliant and misunderstood were likely to face in their lives. The more he reflected on how gracious it was of him to forgive the angry citizens in the jury, the better he felt about himself. Anything was a comfort in a time like this, when the cold, thin air stung his face and left him shivering in his too-light coat. “Didn’t bring a parka with you, laddie?” The roc driver was far too jovial and friendly to have ended up in the position she had, Ezra thought. Sammie, as the woman called herself, wore the heavy leathers and hooded mask of one used to braving the chilly winds; only her eyes were visible. She had a rather deep and throaty laugh. “Lucky for you the spring’s coming down there. Wouldn’t want you to freeze.” “Wouldn’t want me to freeze, would they? No, they’re just content to let me rot.” Ezra imagined he had nothing to lose by talking with this woman; he certainly couldn’t make a break for it on the back of a bird soaring over a valley. “S’not so bad! Not so bad at all. I’ve driven exiles in far worse states than you’re in, and they always make it. Usually, anyway. Weather’s a bit harsh, what with the rains. Oh, and you’ll have to get your land legs; that’ll take a bit. And plants take much longer to grow. And then there’s the humans…” “I know! I know. Thank you, ma’am. I did my research on the Center of the Universe in the time I had.” It was, Ezra thought, kind of them to give him a few days to prepare before he was banished. Considering the charges, he knew they didn’t even have to offer him that. Perhaps the judge was more merciful than she revealed. “My husband’s brother had a friend whose grandfather traveled to the Center of the Universe. Willingly! Old Kentammenon just hopped off onto a mountain peak and made his way down from there. Drank from the streams and ate the creatures he could catch.” Ezra blew on his hands to warm them better than his gloves were doing, and looked back up at the driver. “Did he? Was he a humanologist?” “Nay, he was up to his ears in debts!” Sammie laughed again, steering the roc into a sharper turn than Ezra cared for. “Read about diamond mines in the Center and thought he could make his fortune that way. Funny thing about diamond mines; dragons love ‘em. One bit his hand right off.” Ezra paled, covering his mouth. “Was that meant to be encouraging, ma’am?!” “You didn’t let me finish, laddie! He knocked that dragon upside the head and took it down with one blow. The little human folk were so impressed, one of ‘em gave him a job with a traveling show. Kent made his fortune that way, and he didn’t have the sense The Sun gave a baby buzzard.” Sammie looked over her shoulder briefly, and he thought he saw her wink. “With all those books, I’d guess you to be a scholar. Am I right, laddie?” Ezra tugged the pack of books, jars and cooking pots tighter over his shoulder, even if it strained his back. “I’m a cook, actually.” “Then those are recipes?!” “They’re family heirlooms. The recipes, I mean.” Ezra now felt rather foolish having brought them instead of more important necessities, but he couldn’t abide leaving his pride behind with what was left of his family home. “It’s a way to make a living.” The pilot just shrugged. “Long as the humans know you don’t want to cook any of them. They get strange ideas in their heads about we Sky Folk. Comes from living so far from the sun. Makes the body puny and the brain odd.” She tapped the side of her head, and then whistled. “Alright, girl! We’re almost there, so time to bring her in!” The descent was far too quick for Ezra’s stomach; he barely realized what had happened until the bird reared back and landed in a cluster of great tall fir trees that towered far over his head and brought to mind thick hair brushes. They were standing at the bottom of a rocky cliff covered with lichens and green moss. Ezra wondered at first if Sammie had stopped here in order to let the bird rest and drink from a stream, but she looked expectantly at him over her shoulder. “Well, laddie? This is it!” “This…what? What do you mean, this is it?” “The Center of the Universe. We’re standing on it. It’s quite big, you know! A huge marble covered with things. You need help getting that down? Noticed you’re a little on the short side…” Ezra shook his head, dumbfounded. “No, I can get down just fine.” Despite his reassurances, he had to take a few false steps and then more tumbled than dismounted from the roc. His bag followed after, spilling cookbooks and pots all over the too-hard, too-damp surface of the forest. He scrambled to recover his belongings and save them from the mud before he continued, gesturing all around him. “I know it’s the Center of the Universe! I read about it, remember? So I know this is a forest. But I was told I’d be sent to somewhere I could make a living. Like a town, perhaps.” “A town? Full of humans? Can’t believe you’d take that kind of chance after what happened when you trusted one of them.” The memory stung, and Ezra sucked in a breath. Sammie continued, oblivious, as she dismounted the roc and landed with far more grace. “Doesn’t help that some of the Folk down here feel the need to throw their weight around and give us a bad name. You know what sorts get exiled and all. No offense meant to present company,” she added while ignoring Ezra’s glower. “Word of advice, stay away from the wee humans. They won’t trust you and you’d best not return the favor. Cook for yourself from what you can hunt and forage. Maybe sell some cakes to the local witches in exchange for charms and chicken eggs. They’re not afraid of anyone.” The last of the line of Kettle, chefs who shaped custards out of lightning and soups littered with stardust, and he was to spend the rest of his life in oblivion in the woods eating nettle stew because of some overgrown beanstalk. “Where am I to live, then?” he asked, no longer attempting to hide the defeat in his voice. “I was told I’d be given a place to live.” “And thankful you should be for that! Usually they just send you on your way with your belongings and let you do as you will. But I suppose you’re not yet two decades old so they had some mercy. You’re to live right there.” Sammie pointed to a path through the crooked trees. The canopy of the forest dimmed the sunlight even at high noon; what escaped fell upon a dilapidated, one-floor cabin with a tiled roof staying on apparently through willpower alone. The tiny shapes of birds nested in the windowsills, and an overgrown mess that might once have been a garden crowded around a stone well. “…Oh.” Ezra wondered if he shouldn’t be thankful it wasn’t a cave. “This used to belong to a fellow by the name of Chulainn the Great. Bit of a cranky sort as he got older, and the humans started calling him a wicked giant. Get used to hearing that, by the way. Humans think they’re normal-sized. Anyway, it’s got furniture and a stove; ought to serve you just fine, though I’d get it fixed up some before winter. Suppose you could find yourself another place if you wanted. The Center of the Universe is your prison, not that house. Well! I suppose this is goodbye…” Sammie moved to slap Ezra on the back, but then seemed to notice the way he was staring at the lonely little cottage. Her eyes creased in sympathy, and she gave him a pat on the shoulder instead. “You’re younger than my daughter. I think it is unfair what they did decide for you, laddie. But…” “It’s for the best, I know. Public good. People feel safer when there’s someone to blame.” Ezra sighed and started walking towards the cottage. “Thank you for the transport, ma’am.” “You’ll be fine. The young always thrive better. Just…do be careful who you open your door to, won’t you?” He looked over his shoulder with a rueful smile. “Oh, no worries. I intend to be very careful about that from now on.”